Since the 1960s, he has been a voice for rural America, and in 2011, President Barack Obama dubbed him “a voice for the land,” when presenting Wendell Berry with the National Humanities Medal.

Berry, of Port Royal, has been honored again for his works, his advocacy and defense of the rural lifestyle and his commitment to the land, when, in February, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected him to give the 41st Jefferson Lecture in Humanities.

Since graduating from Eminence High School in 1979, Robert Pettit has spent his entire career in law enforcement.

In a telephone interview Monday, Pettit, who now lives in North Carolina, said he recalls writing an essay in sixth grade, in which he told about wanting to be a Kentucky State Police trooper when he grew up. “I knew at a very young age that’s what I wanted to do.”

What seemed like an ordinary request to the Pleasureville City Commission for additional fire department funding left Pleasureville Mayor Rodney Young visibly frustrated.

Young had presented a request from the fire department to help pay for a fire truck repair bill of $17,000. “I wondered if the city could do any help,” he said. “All the city has paid on (the truck) is some of the insurance and utilities. That’s all the city’s been out on the fire department for 20 years.”

A series of deadly storms swept through the Kentuckiana region Friday afternoon.

Between Southern Indiana and parts of Kentucky, 40 people lost their lives, and thousands more lost their homes to the storms that destroyed Henryville, Marysville and New Pekin, Ind., as well as West Liberty in Kentucky. Dozens more communities were touched, in some way, by the storms.